


Standing Up

by wallaby24



Category: Political RPF, Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 16:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11211918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallaby24/pseuds/wallaby24
Summary: Requested fic of a young Philip and Theresa, where he responds to someone who's being unpleasant to Theresa about women without children.





	Standing Up

**Author's Note:**

> I feel terrible that I can't remember who actually requested this...if you let me know who you are, I'll definitely dedicate this to you! :-)

Late 1980s

Philip glanced at Theresa out of the corner of his eye. She was unusually still, a look of interested nonchalance on her face, but he recognized the set of her jaw as awkward discomfort. He laid his hand on her knee and squeezed, and she gave him a tight smile.

They’d decided to spend a long weekend in the Cotswolds in early December, a short break from London, enjoying the Christmas atmosphere of the countryside. It was now Sunday morning, and they were sitting in a small village church near their bed and breakfast. After the service, they planned to drive to nearby Bath for the Christmas market before heading home that evening.

The sermon had at first glance appeared to be about the angel’s visit to the virgin Mary, announcing that she would conceive, and her ensuing visit to her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. This was all very well and seasonally appropriate, but somehow the local vicar had wandered from the spiritual implications of the coming of the Messiah into the meaning of motherhood. He had begun by expounding on the importance of a mother to a child, but in the last few minutes he had moved onto the significance of motherhood to women, which was far more uncomfortable territory.

“It is not merely that motherhood is a woman’s highest calling,” he was saying now. “It is that a woman cannot be fulfilled without children—she is, you might say, _incomplete_.” Philip felt Theresa’s muscles tensing, and he ground his teeth together. “She has not served her faith; she has not served her God.” It was then that Theresa gave a small gasp of pain—likely unheard by anyone but him—as though she’d been slapped.

And suddenly Philip found himself on his feet; the vicar pausing in his sermon, his eyebrows raised; the congregation swirling around in their seats, staring at the young stranger in their midst who had randomly stood.

Philip was a reasonable man. A quiet, mild-mannered man widely known as easy to get along with. A man who never swore, never so much as raised his voice. He’d thus meant to reason with the older man. He’d meant to deliver a brief, controlled speech about the inherent value of woman. He’d meant to tell him how God’s use of anyone had little to do with their reproductive capabilities. He’d meant to offer a pointed reminder about the pain this was causing to any childless women present, of which Theresa was surely not the only one.

So Philip was as surprised as anyone when all he did was shout, “F--- you!” Nor did he wait to see how long it would take for the vicar to close his gaping mouth and respond: incandescent with rage, he stormed up the aisle and out the door.

He was halfway across the churchyard before he had cooled enough to realize that Theresa was still in the church, and he could hardly go back in and retrieve her…nor could he jump in the car and speed off without his wife.

His wife, who was probably crawling under the pew right now. How _mortified_ she must be…what an _idiot_ he’d been. Nothing about his display had been helpful to her.

He was mortified, too. He didn’t act like that. He didn’t go around swearing at clergy during religious services!

Eager to get as far from the scene as possible, he made his way to the stone wall at the edge of the churchyard, where their car was parked on the other side. He’d step over it rather than bothering with the stupid kissing gate and then wait by the car for her…

“Philip!” He whirled around at the sound of Theresa’s voice behind him. Her eyes were wide and serious as she walked toward him, and he cringed inwardly at the thought of how embarrassed he’d made her. He’d managed to make a difficult situation even worse.

Yet when she reached him, she wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him, and then embraced him tightly.

“Theresa, I—”

But she cut him off. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for standing up for me.”

“I—what? I thought…weren’t you horrified?”

She leaned back to look at him. “Horrified? Why? I know you don’t usually talk like that. You did that because you love me. You knew I was hurting, and it made you angry because you love me.”

How simply put, but how true. He kissed her again and then pulled her close, brushing another kiss to her cheek as she rested her head on his shoulder.

It did make him angry, unspeakably angry, when anyone spoke unkindly to Theresa. He’d heard comment after comment from so-called “friends” and acquaintances. There were the simply insensitive, of how “you can’t understand such-and-such” without being a mother. Then there were the smug ones, who would sneeringly observe how unfulfilling it would be not to raise children, or remark on how glad they were not to be so self-absorbed as to be childless. And then there were the just plain cruel pronouncements of how childlessness was a sign of God’s disapproval. Philip had not, until the last several years, understood how awful people could be.

Of course, Theresa would say that, in the broader picture, none of it mattered. A rude comment might trouble her for a moment, but it would roll off of her, because nothing was as painful as infertility.

But that was the point, wasn’t it? He saw his wife as a woman who was terribly wounded but trying to push on with life anyway. Someone who was trying to make their way through a crowd with a broken leg—and how desperately he wanted to rush over and carry her as others attempted to push her down. For he’d seen how much Theresa had suffered—seen the tears she’d cried for years as their hopes had dwindled each month, seen her sob so hard he'd thought she'd be sick after she’d been told there’d never be a baby, seen how she’d blamed herself for her biology, how she’d confessed her fear that he would leave her. He still saw tears in her eyes when she watched other women with their babies, saw her come home weeping from family occasions filled with other people’s children and pregnant relatives. And then of course there was the physical pain associated with her issues—he’d become accustomed to coming home from work a few days each month to find his wife curled up in bed, whimpering; accustomed to the helplessness of having nothing to offer for her comfort beyond a hand to hold and a hot water bottle that barely helped.

And so it enraged him that there were those who thought Theresa had not suffered enough, that they would notice the knife sticking out of her chest and carelessly twist it.

He laid another kiss on her temple as he caressed her back. “You know none of that’s true, right? Nothing he said was true.”

“Of course,” he heard her say softly. “I know.”

“You have _such great value_ ,” he told her firmly. “And that has _nothing_ to do with what your body can or can’t do.”

“No. I know,” she murmured. She was silent for a moment, and he felt her nuzzling against his neck. “That is, I know people think like he does. It’s not that unusual.”

“But—” he began, intending to protest that this gave it any validity.

“But you don’t,” she said, kissing his cheek. “And that’s all that really matters to me.”


End file.
